This invention relates to a process for the processing of crude petroleum, various oil fractions and oily wastes. More particularly, it relates to a system for removing contaminants such as petroleum and oily substances, whether crude or refined, by means of a simple efficient unit as a way of, for example, cleaning up oil spillage as it may occur on the open sea, inland fresh waters, rock-bound shorelines, tidal pools and harbors and for cleaning various industrial effluent waste materials. The invention is also applicable for cleaning closed containers, such as, for example, tanker bottoms or storage tanks, cooling towers and the like containing crude petroleum, heavy tar fractions, asphalts and heavy, viscous crude oil residues.
Environmental cleanup is of much concern to the country and to the world today. Air and water pollution are a major problem in today's technological society. As far as water pollution is concerned, oil spillage has become an increasing problem with the advent of off-shore drilling and the transport of petroleum in very large tankers. Many proposals have been made for cleaning up and/or degrading such oil spillages, but none has been satisfactorily successful to date. Moreover, there is much public concern over the pollution problems caused by the discharge of effluent waste materials into waterways, and various governments are enacting much stricter standards regarding the contaminant or polluting composition of such effluents.
Ideally, the desired end result of oil or waste material degradation is to restore oil-polluted marine, benthic and littoral environments to habitable, ecologically clean environments. The use of materials primarily of biological origin which are not only bio-degrading, but are also edible, beneficial and completely non-toxic to marine fauna and flora, would be especially advantageous. Synthetic detergents, emulsifying agents, organic solvents or other toxic products of the chemical process or the petrochemical industries, proposed heretofore, do not possess the advantages inherent in the use of materials of biological origin. In fact, the use of synthetic chemicals very often results in the massive killing of marine fauna and flora over a wide geographical area. Accordingly, most of the approaches used in the past, whether mechanical or chemical in nature, have been unsatisfactory.